RCS Russian Double Bill

RCS New Athenaeum Theatre, Glasgow - 24/03/23 

RCS MMus Opera Students | Lada Valešová, conductor

In a week in which the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland has been ranked sixth in the world for performing arts education (QS World University Rankings by Subject 22/3/2023), its MMus Opera students staged two performances of a double bill of one-act operas with a Russian connection, on 22nd and 24th March.  A third opera, Rimsky-Korsakov’s ‘Mozart and Salieri’, appeared in earlier publicity but was dropped from the programme.  A third performance, originally the opening night on 20th, had to be cancelled because of illness.  This review refers to the performance of Friday 24th.  It was great to see again some of the extremely talented principals from a chamber opera double-bill last October (‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat’ and ‘Marilyn Forever’), notably baritone Ross Cumming (Dr P & The Men), soprano Marie Cayeux (Mrs P), mezzo-soprano Megan Baker (Marilyn) and tenor William Searle (Dr S).  Thrilling too, of course, to see new faces of emerging talent and promising careers. 

Serving as an overture to the evening, the original 6-instrument klezmer version of Prokofiev’s Overture on Hebrew Themes was performed while a surreal macabre balletic act involving two old corpses emerging from their huge upright coffins and dancing to the music of a fiddler was performed by William Searle, Sam Marston and Pawel Piotrowski.  A little bizarre, but it did set a melodramatic tone perfect for the first operatic performance.  The instrumental performance was characterful and elegantly nuanced.  Though William appeared in all three programme items, all of his roles on the 24th were silent ones. 

César Cui, the only one of ‘The Mighty Handful’ of 5 Russian composers whose music nobody ever seems to actually know, was the composer of the first opera (1900), ‘A Feast in Time of Plague’, with a libretto by Alexander Pushkin from his play of the same title.  What seemed like a poem in Russian (with English surtitles) toasting the Plague (in 17th-century London) and its power to intensify the experience of living by the inescapable contrast with surrounding death was intoned through loudspeakers, before the curtain rose to reveal a wintry landscape with bare trees and a low ‘table’ covered with a tablecloth and two couples having a party outdoors, with an air of forced jollity in denial of the grief of bereavement.  President Walsingham (Ross Cumming) asks Mary (mezzo-soprano Wiktoria Wizner) to sing a song of mourning; the aria which follows was beautifully sung with a rich, warm lustrous timbre throughout her range, but especially the middle.  Louisa (soprano Rosalind Dobson) teases Mary for her flirting with Walsingham.  The sight and sound of a cart bearing a baby’s coffin to the grave causes Mary to faint.  In the role of Young Man, the fourth friend, played by tenor Sam Marston, comforts her when she wakens disoriented and asks for a more upbeat song, whereupon Walsingham launches into a hymn of praise to the Plague: the lyrics are the poem we heard at the start, but the music is march-like and ironic.  A priest (bass Pawel Piotrowski) bursts onto the scene, scattering the feast (thereby revealing that the low ‘table’ is actually a coffin), upbraids the couples for their disrespectful and inappropriate behaviour and orders them to head home (fabulous dramatic rich bass voice), reminding them of their bereavement.  But Walsingham squares up to the priest, dismissing him and his sensibilities.  The couples resume their party.  As the curtain falls, they fall dead.  Cui’s score, for small theatre orchestra is unmistakably Russian in its melodies and orchestration, and Late Romantic in its style, not unlike Borodin.  It cannot, however, be said to rival any of the operatic masterpieces of Tchaikovsky or Mussorgsky.  I am very glad to have had the chance to experience it, and the performers gave it the fullest advocacy and artistry.  But I haven’t since recalled a single melody from the piece. 

Russian-born composer Elena Langer’s opera ‘Four Sisters’, with a libretto by John Lloyd Davies, takes the names of the Three Sisters in Chekhov’s play, adds a fourth ‘sister’ in the persona of their Maid (Marie Cayeux), plus some farcical plot elements from Puccini’s ‘Gianni Schicchi’, to fashion a comic opera.  The set is a luxury New York apartment with the city skyline visible through a window and an improbably large model of the Statue of Liberty in the room.   New Yorker airhead sisters Masha (soprano Rebecca Murphy), Irina (soprano Megan Baker) and Olga (mezzo-soprano Hannah Bennett) are ‘mourning’ the death of their Russian tycoon father, while really speculating about who will benefit from his will and what they will do (and where they will go) with the money (“anywhere except Moscow” is one of the many running gags).  The music uses a larger orchestra boldly and wittily parodies their “dreams” with, for example, a calypso for Masha’s dream of moving to Florida and a klezmer episode for Olga’s dancelike, ironic “it’s not about the money; anywhere will do” (yeah right).  All the while the Maid shares satirical comments with the audience.  Does she know something?  Periodically the other three phone their mother – every call ending with “love ya – ciao” – another running gag.  The family lawyer Krumpelblatt (Ross Cumming) arrives but has lost the will.  A ransacking search à la Gianni Schicchi ensues and it turns up.  A reading gradually reveals the dream-busting bombshell – the beneficiary must be the fourth daughter, descended from the father’s illicit affair with a Russian princess, the only one willing to go to live in the family pile in Moscow.  Moscow, Idaho, that is.  No spoilers, but also no prizes for guessing who that might be.  Throughout, the singing and sitcom-style comic acting from the principals were superb.  But I reserve a special mention for Marie Cayeux.  I have seen her now in 3 roles: Mrs P in Nyman’s ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat’, Princess Laoula in Chabrier’s ‘L’Étoile’ and now the Maid in Four Sisters.  She has a captivating stage presence and an individual vocal character with a steady vibrato that I find mesmerising (and I’m not always a fan of vocal vibrato).  Wow. 

Throughout the evening, design (Jemima Robinson) and direction (Max Hoehn) were also excellent.  The Royal Conservatoire of Scotland can deservedly own its high QS World ranking as a centre of excellence in the performing arts, while we, the audience, can feel very fortunate to have such a school on our doorstep. 

Cover photo: Duncan McGlynn